SKU: BT.YE0001

It was a chance visit to a second hand bookshop in Nottingham that set me on the trail of Rossini's now well-known Duetto for cello and double bass. But the story begins earlier than that. In the 1960s I was studying the double bass at the Royal College of Music with Adrian Beers, who was at that time principal of the English Chamber Orchestra, on the front desk of the Philharmonia Orchestra, and a member of the Melos Ensemble of London (then one of the leading ensembles of the world). I was working on the 'Dragonetti Concerto', as most young players do, and I wanted to find out a bit about it. My teacher said he thought the autograph manuscript might be in the British Library,which was all the encouragement I needed to secure a pass to the Reading Room so I could go and see for myself.

There, sure enough, I found a large collection of Dragonetti's autograph manuscripts, together with other bound volumes relating to his life. The papers had been lovingly collated and annotated by Vincent Novello, one of Dragonetti's closest friends, then deposited in the library before his departure to Italy in 1848, two years after Dragonetti's death. One of the volumes included a lot of letters about various engagements and music festivals, copies of orders for strings Dragonetti wanted from Italy, details about paintings he wanted to buy, and numerous invitations to private functions. The manuscript of the 'Dragonetti Concerto', of course, wasn't among the papers â?? we now know it to have been written by Edouard Nanny a century or so later.

One name that came up regularly in the documents was that of Sir George Smart. Smart had been a violinist in Salomon's orchestra and had played for Haydn at his London concerts in the 1790s. As a child he had learnt much about music from his father, who had in turn been present at many of Handel's rehearsals when he was preparing some of his major works for the first time. Smart was also a fine keyboard player, becoming organist of the Chapel Royal in 1822. As a conductor.

SKU: PR.114418250

UPC: 680160640959. 9 x 12 inches.

In 2011, Barbara Garrop, my mother, commissioned me to write a piano trio in memory of Norman Garrop, my father, who passed away about thirty years ago. When I started brainstorming about topics for the piece, I found it difficult to recall many moments of my early life involving my father. Too many years had passed, and the memories that I could summon were of achild looking up to her father, not an adult relating to an equal. However, while collecting stories of my father from various family members, along with discovering a number of objects that had once belonged to him and that I had stored away in boxes decades ago, I began to realize that this piece wasn't so much about my father as it was about my re-discovering the man that he was: a loving husband and dad who cared deeply about his family and his passions (which included bike riding, collecting coins, strumming our guitar, playing baseball, watching football games, entertaining people, helping to run local theater and puppet productions, and carving objects out of wook); an accountant who dreamed of a better future: a treasurer of our local synagogue; an early advocate for computers (we owned an Apple II+); and a pranster with a great sense of humor. Ultimately, I decided to musically tell the story of my search for these memories. In the first movement (Without), a child calls out in a sing-song voice, searching for her lost parent. This search intesifies over the course of the movement through a series of themes, including a stepping motif in which a two-note progression steadily climbs higher, a pseudo-jewish folksong, and a passionate longing theme. The child's search becomes increasingly intense throughout the movement, calling out fervently and repeatedly to the parent; the movement ends in a moment of great tnesion and uncertainty. The second movment (Within) quietly opens with the lost parent finally answering, represented by a solo cello; the child (now personified by the violin) has found the parent within the sanctuary of her own heart. This movement highlights the joy and solemnity of this beautiful discovery. -S.G.